DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0315
PERSONALITY
PIETRO BEMBO was certainly of such a disposition towards Raphael
as might have prompted him to compose this rare eulogy above his grave;
Raphael was well-known to him ever since his days in Urbino, between
1506 and 1508, when as confidant of the Ducal house and enthusiastic
participant in the Cortegiano discussions, he already gave the young portrait-
painter and interpreter of men opportunities for proving his talents. At
a later date, as a Cardinal with long white beard as he was painted by
Titian, he still preserved in his house at Padua a small portrait from the
days of his youth in Urbino that were so dear to him. He shared with the
artist an intimacy with TADDEO TADDEI, Raphael’s friend and host in
Florence, with the circle of Giuliano de’ Medici, the “Magnifico”, as he was
called when an exile at Urbino, and with Raphael’s inseparable friend, Bib-
biena. Once, in Rome, when Taddei was writing to Bibbiena, who had mean-
while become a Prince of the Church and Secretary of State, Raphael entered
and dictated to him a request for themes for the pictures in the Cardinal’s
bathroom, in the upper storey of the Vatican, next to the Loggie, “of which a
beginning is to be made in a few days”. As scrittor de' brevi Raphael will also
have been in immediate personal touch with Bembo and Sadolet, as Apostolic
Secretaries under Leo X. An intellectual interchange took place between the
refined stylist and the explorer of sublime style; in 1516 they made an excursion
together in company with Castiglione and the Venetian friends Beazzano and
Navagero, to visit the monuments at Tivoli, the Temple of the Sibyl, the Egyptian
telamons, and the tripod candelabrum for the “triangolo” which is to-day in
the Doge’s Palace, with the Grimani antiques. NAVAGERO took with him
to his new post in Venice as Librarian of San Marco impressions of this journey.
He left his friend BEAZZANO behind as Bembo’s secretary. The evidence of
their intimacy, the double portrait in the Doria Gallery, belonged to Bembo;
after Navagero’s death he gave it to the surviving friend. Even without knowing
these two men, we could not fail to perceive in this group of friends evidence of
that society of strenuous activity in research and poetical composition of which
the artist was able to feel himself an effective member; for in his creative work he
succeeded in giving shape to something which it was granted to but few amongst
them to achieve in their lives—harmony of endowments and character. In this
pair, at one with each other yet so diverse in nature, he felt how opposites com-
plement one another to produce the much-desired equilibrium—“the presence
of so many men of letters together, the agreeable formalities of a cultured socia-
bility”, to which Erasmus was able to testify in such high terms.
Such was the wide compass of the human scale of which Raphael had the
skill to awaken the strains, so complex in its harmonies was the milieu in which
it was granted him to find—and to dispense—stimulus and exaltation; and among
those “agreeable formalities of cultured sociability” were the Orti Letterari of
Rome, a network of villas spread over the hills and valleys of the city, charming
297
PIETRO BEMBO was certainly of such a disposition towards Raphael
as might have prompted him to compose this rare eulogy above his grave;
Raphael was well-known to him ever since his days in Urbino, between
1506 and 1508, when as confidant of the Ducal house and enthusiastic
participant in the Cortegiano discussions, he already gave the young portrait-
painter and interpreter of men opportunities for proving his talents. At
a later date, as a Cardinal with long white beard as he was painted by
Titian, he still preserved in his house at Padua a small portrait from the
days of his youth in Urbino that were so dear to him. He shared with the
artist an intimacy with TADDEO TADDEI, Raphael’s friend and host in
Florence, with the circle of Giuliano de’ Medici, the “Magnifico”, as he was
called when an exile at Urbino, and with Raphael’s inseparable friend, Bib-
biena. Once, in Rome, when Taddei was writing to Bibbiena, who had mean-
while become a Prince of the Church and Secretary of State, Raphael entered
and dictated to him a request for themes for the pictures in the Cardinal’s
bathroom, in the upper storey of the Vatican, next to the Loggie, “of which a
beginning is to be made in a few days”. As scrittor de' brevi Raphael will also
have been in immediate personal touch with Bembo and Sadolet, as Apostolic
Secretaries under Leo X. An intellectual interchange took place between the
refined stylist and the explorer of sublime style; in 1516 they made an excursion
together in company with Castiglione and the Venetian friends Beazzano and
Navagero, to visit the monuments at Tivoli, the Temple of the Sibyl, the Egyptian
telamons, and the tripod candelabrum for the “triangolo” which is to-day in
the Doge’s Palace, with the Grimani antiques. NAVAGERO took with him
to his new post in Venice as Librarian of San Marco impressions of this journey.
He left his friend BEAZZANO behind as Bembo’s secretary. The evidence of
their intimacy, the double portrait in the Doria Gallery, belonged to Bembo;
after Navagero’s death he gave it to the surviving friend. Even without knowing
these two men, we could not fail to perceive in this group of friends evidence of
that society of strenuous activity in research and poetical composition of which
the artist was able to feel himself an effective member; for in his creative work he
succeeded in giving shape to something which it was granted to but few amongst
them to achieve in their lives—harmony of endowments and character. In this
pair, at one with each other yet so diverse in nature, he felt how opposites com-
plement one another to produce the much-desired equilibrium—“the presence
of so many men of letters together, the agreeable formalities of a cultured socia-
bility”, to which Erasmus was able to testify in such high terms.
Such was the wide compass of the human scale of which Raphael had the
skill to awaken the strains, so complex in its harmonies was the milieu in which
it was granted him to find—and to dispense—stimulus and exaltation; and among
those “agreeable formalities of cultured sociability” were the Orti Letterari of
Rome, a network of villas spread over the hills and valleys of the city, charming
297